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Strv 103B armor evaluation by Platypusbill

Found this on Wotlabs. While I can’t speak to whether or not this is 100% accurate, especially as things could potentially change between now and release, it is very interesting. The armor on the Strv 103B is going to troll quite a few people it seems, despite having very little on paper:

You are one of the very few people to speak the truth. I’m not the most skilled player but I’m smart enough to know what makes a game bad. I’ve seen other better players agree with my viewpoint that premium shells ruin the concept of armor thereby the whole game. It doesn’t take much to follow idiots but it takes courage to speak up and question the norm when necessary.

When I did play, I never load premium rounds. Its just something I never really thought should have been there. I rarely play anymore (Sometimes I am on the XBox version with a friend or 2), but when I do, I still keep it all “silver” in all vehicles, even the Panther/M10 with its measly 150mm of pen. Still killed at Black Prince from the front with it

@CYNICALDUTCHIE If you think the Black Prince has no armor, then you haven’t played the Black Prince. And if you have, then you were doing it wrong. If you hadn’t figured out how to angle your armor by the time you get to the Black Prince, then the British heavy line up to that point must have been miserable for you.

For those who didn’t read:
Everything is impenetrable except for at the armored beak between the upper and lower plate where there is no spaced armor, the lower plate is impenetrable unless angled up and the upper plate is impenetrable unless the enemy gets in your face or shoots down into you. Small weak point around the gun where there is no armored shield. Sides around and below the tracks are over matched by 120+mm unless you hit the top hull section where there is some more spaced armor, this tank is an spaced armor/angled beast.

Not over powered because, remember, the S-Tank driver will normally have to angle his whole tank down to hit the enemy tank’s lower plate or angle it up to hit a Copula and that is the best time to shoot the S-Tank because it will either expose its upper or lower plate. You can probably even track the tank in this positions to systematically wreck them meaning the armor is a last resort and should be used at mid to long range.

That’s kinda like saying the LTP isn’t a premium tank because everyone got it. People generally say gold because that is what the ammo use to be. Now it is simply a premium round (not in the sense of exclusiveness, rather in price). Unfortunately or not, it isn’t really going anywhere, and I doubt any changes will be applied to any of the rounds (including the Chinese IS-2’s 250mm pen of HEAT at tier VII)

Actually it’s called gold spam because the “expensive silver” was once only purchasable using gold… and the spam of premium ammo only got worse since that happened but it was essentially pay to win when it was only available for gold…

It doesn’t take much to realize that all “gold rounds” do is ruin the concept of armor and offer substantial advantages with little to no drawbacks for players with little interest in properly learning their tanks’ playstyles. More and more people are realizing but, like Galileo and the church, we are being ridiculed and mocked for our stupidity when it is truly yours and WG’s.

I don’t think luck’s going to help, just practice. I’ve sniped IS-6 cupolas before (and have been sniped in them while driving one) and those appear to be even shorter than this one. Worse case scenario, wait for the driver of the 103B to tilt the tank flatter and punch a round clean through.

What I want to know is when this tank is tilted forward at maximum, like I saw in the video, can light tanks use it as a ramp to jump obstacles? ‘Cause that’d be awesome.

I think the the discouragement for shooting at the cupola is because the average player and tank don’t have the accuracy to reliably hit the hatch at a range of 200-300 meters which is the minimum combat range of the S-Tank unless the Swedish driver is suicidal. Otherwise, the weak point at the armor beak where there isn’t any spaced armor presents a significantly larger target and is closer to the center of the tank’s silhouette.

If you can snipe the coupolas of an IS-6 then good for you, you’re an above average player, you play above average accurate tanks, and/or you fight IS-6’s at suicidal ranges. Nothing wrong with that, just not the norm.

waiting for the 103B to tilt is a good idea if you don’t want to hit the beak in the center, around the gun where there is also no spaced armor, or have a 3x overmatch against the tank’s sides (120mm).

I would say that player who tries to snipe IS-6 cupolas are lunatics. Yes you can do that, but why? Do you really think that wasting time on trying to hit tanks small cupolas gonna achieve something? You just waste your firepower.

I think you don’t realize one simple thing: The STRV 103B will almost always fight from a far distance (sniper). The tank has got excellent camo, small size and good enough accuracy to do this (sort of a tier X E-25). While firing it will stay undetected. And also while rotating and aimin it will stay undetected.

Even if you know where the weekspot is and you have a VERY accurate gun, at that distance you will be on mercy of RNG (this weekspot will be like size of a pixel).

STRV 103B has also got insane mobility so it will be hard to flank it or chase it.
In conclusion: this tank will be frontaly indestructible (99% of the times), and almost impossible to flank. Its only weakness (like in case of most tanks) will be artilery.

btw. I don’t understand WG decision making.
They said that they will improve role of armor and reduce camping i n WoT.
The whole Swedish TD line does not seem to be the answer for this…

Pretty much said the same thing in my post before you, I agree whole heatedly.

As for improving the role of armor, the armor on the Swed will probably not be invincible as the values in this diagram will lead us to believe, in the field armor values never match up with paper armor values. The improved role of armor that they might be trying to teach with these new tanks is armor angling by pointing your gun in the air or dirt.

As for reducing camping, the high mobility of the Swedish tanks will discourage players to sit in one spot and hopefully the 2-3 sec transforming time will encourage players to relocate long distances when they wish to move. Other things to note is that for the Swedish Heavy tanks, they have relatively low armor penetration to other heavies of equal tier which means it will be ill suited to camping at the back. Arguably it would be inefficient to keep the tank destroyers far in the back (500 meters plus) because the low alpha makes it ill suited for shaving off half the enemy hit points with a single hit. Really, to make the Swedish td’s work, you need to flank the enemy and unload raw dpm into them like a long range medium tank. Skilled E25 players will know that they’re most effective firing range is between 400-300 meters to put their dpm to good use as you will miss too many shots in excess range and you put your tank in too much risk if you are too close.

Premium ammo is needed in order to make tomatoes suffer. Without premium, noobs in their heavy tanks will rule the corridors without needing any skill. For skill to be a thing we need premium ammo so that positioning, map knowledge, overall awareness and use of armor become useful. Without premium ammo HTs rule. With premium ammo skill rules. Simple and true.

Because premium ammo = skill right? Seriously though the fact that you claim that gold ammo is needed to combat bads in heavy tanks says a lot more about YOUR LACK of skill then the supposed bads that you evidently can’t kill without it.. Premium ammo makes people adopt a lazy playstyle, because instead of changing to a better position they brute force derp their way past the game mechanics. And that certainly does not take any sort of skill what so ever…